What is MOAC?

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Doctoral Training Centre

MOAC is a pioneering EPSRC funded Doctoral Training Centre, taking in bright science graduates and helping them become the multidisciplinary researchers needed for 21^st century science.

Community

The MOAC DTC has acted as a catalyst for bringing together academics from different departments, particularly through our weekly seminar programme, our annual conference, the MOAC centre itself and the joint supervision of MOAC students' research projects. And of course, our monthly Cake Day...

Science

The central aim of MOAC's scientific remit is to visualize, control and apply molecular processes in cells by harnessing relevant physical (including mathematical) and engineering sciences capabilities in order to solve key problems within the life sciences. We tackle the challenging problems created when assemblies of molecules combine in orchestrated fashions to achieve essential cellular tasks such as replication; protein synthesis; movement of molecules, organelles and cells; and morphology changes. Particular applications areas are those where current techniques are simply just not good enough: nucleic acid-protein complexes, membrane proteins, fibrous proteins, analytical neuroscience and combinations of these.

MOAC's science is summarized by:

PhD projects
Papers published (though this is never up to date as it is a constantly moving target)
Careers that our students move on to.

Degree

Research in the Life Sciences has changed radically within the last decade following the sequencing of the human and other important genomes. The availability of such abundant genomic data, together with the emerging microarray and proteomic data that stem from these resources, provides new and exciting opportunities to unravel complex biological phenomena in many different systems.

MOAC offers a four year degree programme (MSc + PhD) at the interface between Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology, Physics and Computing. Our aim is to provide our students with an insight into the problems and challenges in each of those fields, thereby gaining the communication skills to bridge the gap that exists between the individual disciplines. See departments.

Training

MOAC PhD students are trained to be intimately familiar with advanced mathematical and computational techniques and their use in data analysis, molecular modelling and experimental design. The graduates will also have a feel for the instrumentation technologies used for data collection and will be able to design and implement new instrumentation, new methodologies and new experiments. This includes:

Students complete a 1 year MSc programme in Mathematical Biology and Biophysical Chemistry which includes 3 mini research projects in 'wet' biology, experimental physical sciences and computation/mathematics) to ensure they can communicate across research boundaries when they commence their PhD studies. They are supervised by researchers in at least 2 departments.

In keeping with Research Council recommendations, students at MOAC receive training in Transferable Skills such as team building, or communicating science - as well as being able to avail themselves of Warwick's Graduate School Skills Programme.

Conference

MOAC's funding covers an annual conference for all the students and interested staff, usually in May. These are multi-day events held away from Warwick to foster group spirit with self catering meals planned by the student cohorts. This generally includes at least one BBQ thanks to our director's Australian heritage. The core of the scientific activity is talks and posters from the MOAC MSc students at the end of their first mini-project.

Annual conference

Interested? Prospective Students